Indigenous business owner slams Walmart's 'inappropriate' shirt: 'A lot of tokenism'

As a business owner who’s been trying to reclaim Indigenous language through fashion for the last two years, Chelsee-Marie Pettit was shocked to see a shirt with the word "mom" in Cree and Inuktitut being sold at Walmart.

The shirt also included the word "mom" in other languages.

"It's very inappropriate," Pettit told Yahoo Canada.

"Our Indigenous languages were taken away from Indigenous people… and many of our ancestors were abused or killed for speaking our native tongue," she added.

"Indigenous people are trying to reclaim their language and non—Indigenous people shouldn't be doing that for us."

Pettit is the founder of aaniin retail inc., based in Toronto. Aaniin started out as a streetwear brand in June 2021, featuring Indigenous syllabic writing on its apparel, but it has since grown to also include the work of other brands, artists and musicians.

After receiving texts about the Walmart shirt on Monday from friends and family, Pettit went on to make an Instagram post discussing what it means for Indigenous people to reclaim their economy through fashion and commerce.

Petti said the issue is that it doesn’t even have to be Walmart, it can be any corporation profiting off of Indigenous language, culture or art and the shirt is but an example of that.

"For people to just all of a sudden swoop in and start doing what Indigenous businesses and people and artists and designers have been doing for decades… It doesn't really have a fairness to it," Pettit claimed.

The business owner found out about the Walmart shirt just two days after the aaniin store’s grand opening on June 10 in the Stackt Market in downtown Toronto.

The storefront will continue to be there for the next year and a half.

"There's a lot of marketing plays and tokenism that happens, especially in big mainstream media, and marketing. So it is something that I've been expecting… I just wasn't expecting it to happen two days after my grand opening," said Pettit.

"I actually pulled an all-nighter the day before the grand opening, and I worked really hard to get it off the ground and just showcase what we're doing.

"This is kind of overshadowing my grand opening now, which is really upsetting," she added.

Some people in the comments of her post also pointed out that the printed word is similar in font and colour to Pettit’s work.

"I think to me what was the most shocking was… just the colour red, the exact symbols that they're using, it does shockingly look like my trademark that I have been using for the last two years," she said.

"So to see that was kind of like a big eye opener. And I didn't really think that other people would think that at first.

"And it was really kind of validating to hear so many people saying that it reminded them of my logo, or they thought that the shirt was mine until they read the caption on my Instagram post."

Walmart responds

In an email to Yahoo Canada, spokesperson for Walmart Canada Stephanie Fusco said the maternity shirt in question features the word "mom" in a number of Canada's most-spoken languages, including Cree, Inuktitut, Mandarin, Punjabi, French and English.

"It is an example of how we support our suppliers in offering more inclusive designs for our customers. We acknowledge the importance of consulting Indigenous groups and encourage our teams and suppliers to make this part of our process for similar products," Fusco stated.

She added Walmart is "proud" to support Indigenous communities and businesses, including by selling Indigenous-designed Orange Shirt Day shirts in 2022 from Indigenous Proud merch.

"In both 2022 and 2021, 100% of the profits from our Orange Shirt Day products went to the Orange Shirt Society to support the important work they do in raising awareness about the lasting effects of residential schools," Fusco said.

But for Pettit, it's a common misconception that it's OK for a non-Indigenous source to sell Orange Shirts as long as they’re donating the proceeds.

"I really do believe that it's better to amplify the businesses that are already selling orange shirts," Pettit said.

"Indigenous businesses are amazing. We're very resilient… We collaborate with each other a lot, which a lot of these non-Indigenous corporations don't do."

She added collaboration doesn’t happen when one party is much more powerful than the other.

"It doesn't create a fair representation," Pettit claimed. "So I recommend people to support indigenous businesses, and for non-Indigenous corporations to rethink their marketing practices."

She said if non-Indigenous corporations are looking to donate money, they can just do that without having to sell items that Indigenous people are creating themselves.

"There's tons of money in their budget, they can easily just donate the profits. They don't have to sell items in order to donate."

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